The Bible Study Hour

Mark Daniels: While there is a legitimate role for civil courts, what was happening in the church at Corinth was a telling tale that much was amiss among the brotherhood of believers. Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically.

The apostle Paul discovered that in the Corinthian church, disagreements were not being settled by church elders or wise older men of the faith in a biblical fashion. Instead, brothers were taking brothers to court, and in doing so, set a very bad witness for both the church and the faith. Listen now as Dr. Boice takes a closer look at what was happening in the church at Corinth and his two remedies to right an extremely convoluted state of affairs.

Dr. James Boice: It's not very often that I title a sermon with a word that I'm not even sure how to pronounce. As a matter of fact, I can't think of ever having done that before. I had to look it up. I suppose the reason for that is that it's a word relatively new in common speech. Not that it's a new word, but I can't recall in reading literature ever seeing that, at least not in a memorable setting.

It's the word litigious. It means prone to litigation or prone to go to court. The reason this is somewhat of a new word is that the proneness to go to court about which it speaks is something relatively new, at least in American life. I do recall seeing an article, I believe in Time Magazine, entitled "The Litigious Society." And it made the point that there has been a change in the way we do things.

When there was a dispute between people several generations ago, generally it was settled in an informal way by neighbors working it out together. Often neighbors would help in that area. And then there was a period in which people would tend to work things out by laws. That is by having a local assembly, a state, or even perhaps the Congress pass a law in a certain area where conduct was ambiguous and the law would be, as we say, the law of the land. It was the thing by which people lived.

But laws and their interpretation are under dispute, and what has happened in our time is that disputes have increasingly found their way into the courts. This article in Time Magazine was pointing out that people today run to court often with suits at what's apparently the drop of a hat. I was flying back from Toronto and I happened to notice the airline's magazine. I picked it up and it had an article in it about lawyers. It said, I'm not sure if I am remembering the figure correctly, but by the last decade of this century, there would be one million lawyers in the United States. And then there were three dots, and the word that followed was unfortunately.

Well, it may be unfortunate that that happens in the secular world. What Paul says in the sixth chapter of 1 Corinthians is that it is extremely unfortunate when that attitude passes into the church of Jesus Christ. More than that, it's a shame that that should happen. It's not just that we live in a litigious society; we associate with a litigious church. Many things which in previous generations were properly dealt with are now dealt with by litigation.

This is the third problem that Paul is dealing with in this very interesting and helpful letter to the church at Corinth, his first letter. First of the problems that existed in that church was their pride in human wisdom. They thought they were so smart, so important, so instructed in the affairs of this world that they were blown out of all proportion and exalted it over one another. They were so glad they were wise, so glad they were noble, so glad they weren't like the common ignorant folk.

Paul grappled with that head-on, calling it a sin, which it is, and challenging them with this great fact: God has set himself against the wisdom of the world. God's business in this world is to tear the world's wisdom down because the world by its wisdom crucified Jesus Christ. Instead of that, says Paul, God uses the foolish things of the world—those who don't have reputations, those who are not important in the world's eyes, those who lack magnificent educations. He uses those as the channel of his blessing. And if the Corinthians would do things in God's way, they had to readjust their thinking at that point.

Then the second problem he dealt with was this question of immorality, which he gets to in chapter five. There was great immorality in the church, and again, the same thing had happened. Instead of repenting of this, instead of being ashamed, chagrined that such a thing could happen in the church, the Christians at Corinth were proud about it—boastful, says Paul. Why? Well, probably, although he doesn't spell it out, because they thought they were so liberal. "We're not like these narrow-minded fundamentalists who sometimes are very narrow-minded, but we are broad-minded. Why, we can include this sort of thing within the church; we can understand how it happens."

Paul says it's shameful. Paul's cure at that point was church discipline. He said you're very lax. It's not that you're so strong in your liberality; you're actually very weak in your liberality. You're not maintaining the discipline of the church. His instructions are very clear, twice over, in unmistakable language. He says what you must do is expel the wicked man. So we examined that, and we saw that you do have to understand it within the purpose of church discipline. Church discipline is meant to be remedial, to draw the sinner back. And we saw in this case that that is what happened because in 2 Corinthians, when Paul refers to this incident again, he says yes, the man has repented, now bring him back in order that he might not have sorrow upon sorrow, and he rejoiced at what was happening.

Now here in chapter six, we come to this third matter. Paul doesn't spell out exactly what was happening, but apparently what was happening is that Christians in the church at Corinth were going to law with one another. Now we have to treat this in a balanced way. I've read through a number of the commentaries on this particular chapter of 1 Corinthians, and I've discovered, I think wisely on the part of the commentators, that men of various theological persuasions—Charles Hodge on the one hand, who's written a great commentary on 1 Corinthians, or Harry Ironside on the other, sort of an informal commentary but coming from quite a different background—these men and others like them have agreed that you have to be very careful here in handling this passage not to get the idea that somehow the courts or civil government is utterly illegitimate. Because it's not. All you have to do is read the Bible to discover the contrary.

These men remind us that in Israel, to give one example, God himself established judges who were to hear cases that came from the people and to deal justly in these affairs. Or again, we're reminded that the apostle Paul, when he was arrested through the hostility of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and brought before the courts of the day, the Roman courts, didn't hesitate at all to appeal to Caesar because he was a Roman and he had certain rights in a Roman court. He recognized that God has set up government, and it's a blessing when it functions properly. And so Paul appealed to Caesar, and there's not a word in the Bible anywhere to suggest that he was wrong in doing so.

And yet having said that there is a legitimate role of the courts, it is quite obvious when we read this that Paul is talking about something that is quite wrong in the Christian community. There are several things that were wrong, several things that were to be faulted in their conduct. The way to understand this is to take them in inverse order. What Paul does in this chapter is talk about the thing that was most evident, and then he traces it back to its cause, and then he traces that back to a still further cause. And the way to understand it, beginning with the root of the matter, is to go to cause number three and move back to number two and then treat number one.

The third thing is what you find in verse eight. "Instead," he says—he's contrasting it with what he said before—"but instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers." That's the fundamental problem. This is what was going on in the church. You had men and women within the church of Jesus Christ who were cheating, defrauding their brothers. If that hadn't been going on, none of the other things would have happened. And so when you go back to the original problem, this is the problem.

Obviously, that's what Paul is concerned about because you'll notice that the verses immediately following this begin to talk about the nature and characteristics of those who will inherit the kingdom of heaven as over against those who will not. Paul says you were like some of those who were ungodly before your conversion, but now you're different and you must live differently. Unless you understand that his major concern is the problem of verse eight, those last verses don't seem to fit. You say, "Oh, he's changing the subject here; he's beginning to talk about antinomianism and something entirely different." But it's not different. You see, what he's concerned with is upright Christian character. And so when he begins to talk about the failure of the church, this is the point at which he begins.

Now from that, a second fault came, and this is that the Christians were fighting one another. First of all, they were cheating and defrauding one another, and then out of that came the kind of disputes that eventually spilled over into formal legal contests. And then the third thing, the thing with which he begins the section, is that in order to resolve those, they appealed not to someone in the Christian community who was capable of justice in such a matter and wisdom, but they appealed rather to the secular authorities, and that he found to be outwardly and obviously offensive. "If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints?"

So that's what Paul's talking about. Now as he analyzes it, he proposes two solutions. And the first solution is this: if at all possible, Christians should find someone within the Christian community capable of judging in such matters. Now I say if at all possible because sometimes it isn't possible. If it is possible, it's a disgraceful thing. Paul is writing sarcastically here. He's saying even in this church, which seems to be behaving itself so badly, there at least, he says, ought to be somebody who's capable of doing that.

He's sarcastic when he talks about the lowest among them. "If you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church." There ought to be somebody there even if you don't think well of them that's able to handle a matter such as that. And so I say, you see, if it is the case that in a Christian community you are unable to find anybody that has enough wisdom to settle that kind of a dispute, it is a great disgrace. It ought not to be. Even in a church like this, there should have been people who could do that.

But I still say it's not always possible, and unfortunately, sometimes a situation is so disgraceful that people like that are not to be found. It's interesting that in our day with everybody going to court and Christians also going into court against one another, sometimes in official ways as one organization sues another, there has arisen up in America a group of Christian lawyers who are committed to working these things out in a Christian way. It's a Christian legal or arbitration society. That's a good thing, and sometimes, unfortunately not often enough, Christian organizations that get into this kind of a tussle have appealed to this Christian society and solutions have been reached without going to the courts. That's the first solution Paul proposes.

But then as is Paul's way, he proposes a second, and the second solution is more radical than the first. What he says in this area is found in verse seven and following. "The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means that you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?" Paul is saying, you see, if you find it impossible to work it out, isn't it better for the sake of the testimony of Jesus Christ to allow yourself to be cheated by someone who is doing that rather than to bring disgrace upon Christ's name?

Now let me enter a qualification at this point because in such matters, qualifications are called for. There's a difference, I believe, between what you will endure as an individual in this area and what you should endure on behalf of someone else. Quite different, you understand. For somebody to cheat me and for me to say, "Well, all right, it's a Christian brother even though I'm in the right and he's in the wrong; rather than pursue this, I'll allow myself to be cheated. He can take that and go. I'll just count it a loss, I'll write it off, I'll trust God for the outcome." That's an entirely appropriate individual behavior.

But if somebody else is cheating you, party number B, it is not Christian behavior for me to stand by and say, "Well, it's a Christian for you to get cheated. Go ahead and get cheated. I don't care; it's none of my business." That's not Christian behavior. On the contrary, at that point, I should enter into the fray in order to maintain so far as I'm able justice in that particular case.

We have to face that, you see, whether when we get into struggles with other Christians, whether that goes to court or not, whether we're really doing the right thing when we try to press the point or whether we ought not, where we ourselves are concerned, to be willing to be defrauded. Harry Ironside, in the commentary I mentioned a moment ago, tells of something that happened to him when he was a young boy. He was in Canada, in one of the cities in Canada, and his parents said, "I want you to come to church and see a dispute that's going on and see what was going to happen." I suppose they thought it was going to work out well, but when he got there, it didn't seem to be.

You may know that sometimes the most unpleasant things you see in life happen in congregational meetings, and this is what was going on in this particular church. There was a tremendous battle going on between two of the leaders. And finally, one of the leaders stood up and he was just shaking in his anger, and he said, "There are certain things I will not tolerate, and the one thing I will not tolerate is to be defrauded of my rights!" And there was a Scottish brother there who seemed to have been hard of hearing, or at least he was pretending to be. And he said, as a lawyer will sometimes do in court, "What was that? I didn't quite hear that."

And he repeated it again, "The one thing I will not tolerate is to be defrauded of my rights!"

"Pardon me, I didn't quite get that. Would you say that again?"

And he made him say it a third time. It's harder to repeat something in anger a third time. And then finally, this old Scotsman said, "Yes, I thought that's what I heard you say. Is it really the pattern of Christians not to be defrauded of their rights? Jesus came to this earth not to get his rights but to get his wrongs." And at that point, as Harry Ironside remembers, the man who had shaken with anger began to shake in contrition, and he broke down and began to weep, and he said, "Yes, that's correct, and I am wrong and I withdraw the objection." What a marvelous way to have disputes resolved. That should be the pattern in the Christian church.

Now I want to say something about the role of the state because although Paul doesn't develop it here, dealing with another problem, it is part of the total picture. What is the role of the state? Does the state have a legitimate authority even over the lives of Christians, not necessarily in antagonism between themselves—they ought to be able to resolve that between themselves—but over Christians generally?

One of the great illustrations of the proper role of the state was found, and I'm sure you realize this, in the trial of Jesus Christ. And it was significant not simply because it was Jesus on trial, but because Jesus stood there in that capacity as the head of the church before Pilate, who was the representative of Caesar, which was the greatest power in the Roman world at the time.

The issue was the issue of authority. Who had authority? Jesus was accused of being a king, and Pilate began to interrogate him on that point. He said, "Are you a king?" And Jesus explained the nature of his kingdom. It was a kingdom of truth, he said. "If it were a political kingdom, my servants would fight, but it's not; it's a kingdom of truth." And Pilate recognized that that was a different sphere. He wasn't threatened by a kingdom of truth, and so he went out and said to the Jews, "I find no fault in him."

Then they shifted the complaint. They said, "Well, all right, if you won't crucify him for that charge, let's try this one: he made himself out to be a Son of God. That's blasphemy; he deserves death by our law." And that got to Pilate because he probably didn't really believe that Jesus was a Son of God, certainly not in the Christian sense, but you know, there were half-divine, half-god beings in the Roman world, so they thought. And maybe Jesus was somebody special, and people like that can get at you if you do something wrong. So we read he was afraid when he heard this, and he went back in and began to talk to Christ again.

There were aspects of the trial where Jesus didn't reply. That is where Pilate got into areas that didn't concern him. When that happened, Pilate said, "Are you standing there saying nothing? Don't you know that I have power to crucify you or to set you free?"

At that point, Jesus said what I believe is the most significant statement in all the Bible concerning the legitimacy of human government and its limitations. Jesus said, "You would have no authority"—our Bibles say power, and it's not that word *dynamis*, which means explosive power, or *kratos*, which means the power of rule, though that would be a legitimate word—we have it in words like theocracy and democracy and plutocracy and so on. It wasn't that word. He used the word *exousia*, which means authority, and he said, "You would have no authority over me except it were given you from above. Therefore, he who committed me unto you has the greater sin."

Ah, that's interesting, isn't it? You see, if Jesus had merely said, "You'd have no power except it were given to you from above," that would simply mean in the order of this world, some beings are more powerful than other beings, and in that kind of context, you can't talk about sin. A cat kills a mouse. The cat isn't sinning. It's more powerful than the mouse, that's all. It's just *kratos*.

But Jesus said authority. Authority is something which is given, something which is delegated, something which is given by the greater to the lesser. And you see, when Jesus began to talk that way, Jesus was saying God is the authority, and he has given some authority to you as the head of the Roman government in this area. Therefore, while it legitimates your authority, it does limit it. And if you pronounce wrongly, it is sin.

That's very important for us to remember in our day. Christians sometimes make the mistake of withdrawing from the state as if the state has no legitimate authority at all. And when we do that, if we undermine the state in so doing, we do so at our peril. We need the state. God has established the state for justice and defense, and those are biblical guidelines. On the other hand, if we do what the secular world does and that is make the state absolute, forgetting that the authority of the state and its courts comes from God, then there is no check upon the government. Law becomes not a human attempt to administer the eternal law of God, but it becomes arbitrary and the majority vote, or perhaps in some systems even the decision of a small body of men like those on the Supreme Court, becomes the morality of the land.

Now at the very end of this, Paul begins to talk about how Christians must live, and these are strong words. We have such an attempt to water them down because well, we believe in justification by faith. That's true, it's a great doctrine; we don't want to mix in works with justification, and that's good. But notice how Paul says it. Let's hear what he says. He says, "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God?"

He doesn't say the unjustified will not inherit the kingdom of God, but the wicked, those who are wicked, those who act wickedly. Then he spells it out: "Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves"—see here he's getting to them. You understand he's speaking to the situation. He's mentioning these other things—oh, they would agree with that just the way we do: "Of course idolaters won't get in heaven, they worship false gods; and adulterers, well, we know that's bad sin; and male prostitutes and homosexual offenders, all of that, yes."

But you see what they were guilty of. He says it earlier in the chapter: cheating and wronging one another. Now he's getting to them. Or, he says, "thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers—these will not inherit God's kingdom." You say, well, doesn't Paul believe in justification by faith? Of course he does. Where we find it most clearly in the word of God is in Paul's writings. Well, then, is Paul contradictory? No, he's not contradictory. He just sees a truth that we tend to overlook, and the truth is simply this: there is no justification without regeneration. Nobody is justified by faith who is not born again. And those who are born again by definition have a new nature, and it's the nature of God, and they will begin to grow in righteousness and live in a way which repudiates such sins.

You say, well, can a Christian lie? Yes, unfortunately, Christians lie. Can Christians sometimes swindle one another? Yes, they do. That's what he's writing about here; that's the problem. But he's saying, you see, that cannot—let's make it strong—that cannot be a pattern of life with you if you call yourself a Christian, because if you live this way, you are no Christian, you are not born again, you are not justified.

But what does he say? He expects something so much better of them. He says, "That's what some of you were." That's the background some of you came out of. Yes, all of these sins were present in the lives of you who are now changed and members of the church. But praise be to God, you are now changed, he says. Look: "You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

People have looked at those phrases—washed, sanctified, justified—and said well, maybe Paul's getting it backward. Isn't it true that justification comes first and then sanctification? I don't think Paul makes mistakes. Or if he did, at least the Holy Spirit was not making a mistake when he inspired these words. What Paul is talking about is three different ways of looking at the subject of sin.

When he says you are washed from sin, what is he speaking about? Sin's defilement. You're washed. You were dirty, but now you're washed clean. When he talks about sanctification, what is he talking about? Sin's estrangement. Sin separates us from God, but now we are sanctified, separated unto him. And when he talks about justification, what's he talking about? Sin's guilt. You were guilty before the bar of God's justice, but God, the great judge of all, has declared you righteous through the work of Jesus Christ.

What's the conclusion? I suppose the conclusion is in two parts. Number one: examine yourself to see whether this really describes you. Have you been washed? Have you been sanctified? Have you been justified? They go together; you can't have one without the other. Is this true of you? Make your calling and election sure because nothing is more important in all of this life.

But then secondly: if you have, live that way as one who has been forgiven everything through Christ, who gave everything for us. Let us pray.

Our Father, it's hard for us to read the hard words of Scripture because they speak hardly to us. But our Father, we'd ask you to speak to us through this text and bring about, we pray, that kind of self-examination which is beneficial to the soul. And grant that we might live not as we were, but as those who have been changed by the work of Christ and by the Spirit of our God. In Christ's name, amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to The Bible Study Hour, featuring the teaching of Dr. James Boice. Why is it that some people think that God looks at their sin differently than he looks at the sin of others? The truth is that sin is everyone's problem. Find out more in another message by Dr. Boice entitled "The First Contrast: Righteousness and Sin." This free CD offer is our way of saying thanks for listening. Call us at 1-800-488-1888 and we'll be pleased to send you a copy of "The First Contrast: Righteousness and Sin." That number again is 1-800-488-1888.

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Dr. Boice's impact reach far beyond the pulpit. Our Bible teacher was a prolific author and articulate spokesman for the Reformed faith around the world. Audio and print materials from Dr. Boice's event, broadcast, and writing ministries are available at reformedresources.org. That's reformedresources.org.

I'm Mark Daniels. It's sad but true that the modern-day evangelical church is compromising some of the foundational standards of the Word of God, questioning biblical authority, sexual morality, and God's sovereignty. But these compromises are not a new development. Join Dr. Boice as he examines Paul's admonition on these areas of compromise in the church at Corinth that still apply to us today. That's next time on The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.